In his classic early 19th-century work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville notes that public law and administration in a democracy are fickle and dreadful at long-term planning. At every turn (at least back in the 1830s), the majority becomes distracted and moves on to the next hot item. He observes:
“As the majority (in the United States) is the only power which it is important to court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest ardor, but no sooner is its attention distracted than all this ardor ceases; whilst in the free States of Europe the administration is at once independent and secure, so that the projects of the legislature are put into execution, although its immediate attention may be directed to other objects.”
Democracy, Tocqueville warned, needed countervailing forces against its own natural tendencies toward excessive passion, myopia, and fickleness.
Now we can debate whether what Tocqueville claimed about democracies in the 19th century still holds any truth, but what catches my attention here are the governing problems posed by excessive passion, myopia, and fickleness.
Enter Donald Trump as Apocalypse Now’s Colonel Kilgore.
Though the meme is but a day old, much has understandably been made of Trump’s (hopefully) enigmatic “Chipocalypse Now” meme. On this platform, Matt Bernius takes the meme seriously (quite rightly, I think) and does a fine job unpacking its iconography and implications.
Matt points to Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore’s wanton destruction, his disregard for distinguishing proper from improper targets, and his glorying in violence. Matt doesn’t explicitly note it, but he might also have mentioned Kilgore’s forlorn line to Martin Sheen’s character: “Some day this war’s gonna end.” This is not the comment of someone intent on success, but of someone who relishes violence and spectacle for their own sake. The movie suggests Kilgore is a “true” military man because he sees war as process. He only wishes to secure the beach, no matter how absurd the reason. In that sense, the comparison to Trump is apt. Trump’s love of immediate spectacle and the short-lived news cycle it generates nearly always outweighs any concern for precedent (none) or real-world results (minimal).
For years, I’ve told folks that Trump reminds me of Robert Duvall’s character, and for the willing, I’ve shown the clip that prompts the comparison. My own long-standing comparison between Trump and Kilgore differs from the connections that Matt suggests. In a curious and possibly unconvincing way, the connection I’ve always seen between Trump and Kilgore may actually offer a measure of hope that the worst-case scenarios about Trump’s domestic use of the military will not come to pass. And that connection is Trump’s short attention span. Aside from personal grudges (which he never lets go), Trump’s focus is usually fleeting and ever-shifting. His speech patterns alone reveal this—rambling, digressive, constantly losing the thread as he chases tangents upon tangents. The man is forever distracted by his own mental squirrels.
This may explain why some of his followers don’t take his grand pronouncements seriously. Make Canada the 51st state? He moves on. Annex Greenland? He tests the waters, then drops it. The biggest infrastructure bill in history…until it isn’t a bill at all. The greatest healthcare plan until it vanishes altogether. Inject disinfectant for Covid, except no, he’s “just kidding.”
Threaten Chicago with war? He’s trolling, his supporters say. Quit taking him so literally.
I hope this line of thinking is right. Trump goes for the easy kill. Much of what drives him is theater. He probes the soft underbelly for quick wins, but he has little patience for the boring, steady administration of law. He floods the field with big pronouncements, too many to track, and by the time I, for one, focus on one, I find myself well beyond the curve. Both Trump and seemingly the rest of the world have already moved on to the next thirty-minute news cycle. It’s a terrible way to govern, but it may spare us his worst instincts at least in this one instance.
Which brings us back to Kilgore. In the scene I have in mind (starting around 1:50), Kilgore and his men come across a mortally wounded North Vietnamese soldier, clutching a pot lid against his stomach to keep his intestines from spilling out. The man stretches out his arms, begging for water. While others dismiss him, Kilgore surprises everyone with a rare moment of apparent magnanimity. He declares that he’d be proud to let any man “holding his guts in with his own hands” drink from his canteen. He uncaps the canteen, squats by the man, and begins to pour water to his lips. But just then, an underling approaches Kilgore to inform him that Lance Johnson, a surfer(!), has arrived on the scene, and the surf upriver is perfect.
Immediately, Kilgore abandons the wounded man. He spills water mid-sip, springs to his feet, and walks away, talking exuberantly of clearing the riverbank so Lance can surf. The dying soldier is forgotten in a flash. Within seconds, Kilgore transforms from a man seemingly of surprising expansiveness to reveal what he really is—an overgrown child chasing his id.
That’s Trump, or so I hope. I don’t think he’s merely trolling when he makes big pronouncements. I believe he really does want Canada as the 51st state, or Greenland as U.S. territory. But when he meets resistance and lacks support from his team, more often than not, he drops it.
How Trump’s (almost certain) future domestic use of the military unfolds will depend partly on optics and partly on resistance. My hope—crossing my fingers here—is that if he can declare an easy victory (“I’ve ended crime!”), he will. If the bloodlust of his administration and followers pushes him to dig in and to use real force, all bets are off. I pray but don’t exactly expect that he’ll be distracted once more by the next imaginary squirrel racing through his mind, wandering off to some new absurd project—like declaring Mars exclusively ours.
As I’ve noted before, surprise is no longer a luxury we can afford. But we can still hope for the best while bracing for the worst.
